Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

What Cham rarely tells people – he’s both private and humble – is that he started making some small co-investments with me in tech firms starting with Maker Studios where he was one of the earliest investors. Startup Lessons' So if you don’t know, now you know … Cham & Nsilo. Welcome to the family.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

We also had many senior studio executives and leaders. Maker Studios. Startup Lessons' Maynard Webb) and the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti. I’ll try to publish some video from the event when we get a chance to edit some of it. It is not your mom’s old LA. Buying local teams with talented engineering groups.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2013

Our industry just took one big step towards legitimacy with the hiring of renowned media exec Ynon Kreiz to run Maker Studios. And this month we announced that Maker Studios, where I am an investor and board member, crossed 3 billion views. He was not a lawyer at Maker Studios – he was a behind-the-scenes leader.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

So why is online video such an attractive market to build a startup? These markets represent about $600 billion of total spend between them, leaving tons of opportunities for startups to disrupt and grow large. Traditional studios have suffered from The Innovator’s Dilemma. Content goes global (of Maker Studios 4.4

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2014

I have never been more optimistic about the impact that the tech startup community is having on cities in America or about the role that cities outside of San Francisco / Silicon Valley can play in our future. Changes in the Startup Ecosystem. So the startup work moves to where the startup founders live and not vice versa.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

But then the Harlem Shake went batshit crazy when Vernon Shaw of Maker Studios saw the video on Reddit and suggested that Maker should, well, make a video of the Harlem Shake in an office environment. ShayCarl (a Maker Studios co-founder) in particular. In fact, that’s how Maker Studios got started in the first place.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2014

On August 26th I had an equally effusive intro from Ynon Kreiz, also a friend, trusted source and also the CEO of portfolio company Maker Studios. Petri was formerly the head of the studio that build Angry Birds (Rovio) and led 250 people who built many of the gaming properties and characters the first iPhone users came to love.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Let me start with the obvious baseline that most people probably know instinctively: Los Angeles is the 3rd largest technology startup ecosystem in the US. billion in venture capital to LA’s technology startups and 2014 will shatter that figure. But to answer the actual question “Is there something going on in LA?”

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 13, 2014

Startup CEO experience (Founded P.S. XO along with my good friend Soleil Moon Frye. We believe it’s important to have our partners all based in one location so our starting point is wanting our partners to be based in LA and be committed to making this city a vibrant startup community that is now the third largest in the country.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2015

Everybody now knows that LA produced SnapChat, Tinder and Maker Studios. If you’re a tech or media startup considering whether LA is now a mature market I think the data will assuage any concerns. The report on the LA Tech Market can be found on this link. LA is the real deal and growing.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

For much of 2013 I watched the press write articles about how the YouTube “MCNs” (multi-channel networks) were doomed and tried to square that with the data I was watching at the one I invested in, Maker Studios, who has had one hell of a year. This is always how we saw Maker Studios. ” YouTube takes 45%.

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networking media strategy technology 366

Revolution

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images There was never a guarantee that Detroit would become the Motor City. The silver lining to the horrors wrought by Covid is that the pandemic opened the venture capital community’s eyes to the world of opportunity beyond the traditional tech startup hubs of California, New York, and Massachusetts.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

But markets have changed and I think investors, founders and experienced executives who want to join later-stage startups can all benefit from playing the long game. Maker Studios?—?sold Since we owned 29% at the time on a $187 million fund (the same that had Maker Studios) it would have been tempting if I were playing for quick wins.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

I live in LA and fund startups. So you can imagine that I see a lot of video startups. What most people never understood about Maker Studios is that much of their growth came through technology innovation and advantages on our back-end the most people didn’t even know about. Startup Lessons' Most will fail.

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Jason Malki

FEBRUARY 13, 2025

Kashyap Kompella I had the pleasure of interviewing Kashyap Kompella is the founder of Talentmapp , an AI-driven people search engine designed to facilitate purposeful, noiseless networking for professionals, startups, and venture studios. He is also launching TPH Venture Studio , a pre-seed venture fund backing AI startups.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. Most of what I think about startup communities came from mentorship by Brad Feld through hours of private discussion and debate.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2014

Think DropBox, Airbnb, Pinterest, Maker Studios, SnapChat, Tinder). Startup Lessons' The opportunity set is much bigger than ever (50x more users, 10x time online, mobile, social, credit-card enabled, global) … when things work they work faster and at an unprecedented scale.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 2, 2020

Crawl, walk, run is a mantra for doing a startup and I recommend it to everyone. USV TEAM POSTS: Nick Grossman — Jul 2, 2020 Second Chance Studios David Gabeau — Jun 26, 2020 Augmented Reality NFTs. It takes a bit longer to get to the finish line this way, but the probability of success is way higher with crawl, walk, run.

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A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC

JULY 8, 2020

When the pandemic started, the conventional wisdom was that the capital markets would take a beating, including the venture capital market for startup capital. The second quarter of 2020 is now behind us and we will see the data on it soon. A bullish stock market leads to a bullish venture capital market.

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venture capital capital ventures innovation 206

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

Startups are hard. We tell startup stories. ” Strangely, the best I’ve ever heard this exemplified is in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential - which is really a book about startups as told through kitchen stories. Our founder, Yves Sisteron, was my mentor and board member at my first startup.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We then help surround founders with other talent who want to join important causes but don’t have the startup idea themselves. It’s rare to find extraordinarily talented individuals who are natural leaders and who are driven to succeed and who have a passion for startups so when you do you work hard to find opportunities for them.

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

LEAN STARTUP MOVEMENT. And finally there is the most modern spin on these concepts by two individuals who have built tech startups and have done an excellent job at describing the process. ” is Eric Ries who wrote the must own, “ The Lean Startup ” *. Startup Advice' I work with many companies.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 19, 2015

Along with Greycroft, I was the first institutional investor in Maker Studios (sold to Disney for nearly $1 billion) and am still the largest investor in Mitu Network , the largest online video producer of Latino content. If all you ever do is create YouTube content then I agree – that’s not a viable startup business.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

In other news we announced the closing of $61 million in funding at Maker Studios , which I’ll talk publicly about soon. He first came to see me in 2008 when we was raising money for his 1st startup – NextMedium. Startup DNA. I’ve known Hamet for 5 years. That feeling happens 2-3 times per year maximum.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Consider the case of LegalZoom, one of our cities great startups. In 2010 the City of Los Angeles started trying to crack down on tax receipts of Internet startups allocating them to the least favorable gross-receipts tax bracket taking up their city tax by 500%. Startup Advice' The result?

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

I’ve spent a lot of my career thinking about digital and online video (with investments in companies like Maker Studios) so for that reason amongst many, I was excited to open the Upfront Summit a few weeks ago by interviewing Meg Whitman about Quibi and the digital media space.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2015

This accelerated after I co-led the seed & A rounds at Maker Studios, which sold 3 years later for $1 billion to Disney. Otherwise known as a tech startup. We will port it to Android ASAP after our first rev of proper user feedback. So Why Did We Invest? As a VC (especially based in LA), I see hundreds of video apps.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 6, 2013

We got along and shared stories about the startup market. We worked together just shy of a year and during that period of constantly seeing startups Aaron made the decision that he actually wanted to be an entrepreneur more than a VC. I’ll leave the year out. But we continued to meet over the years and swap experiences.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 23, 2012

I have been close to the tech & startup sectors for more than 20 years and I can’t think of a period in which I felt more optimistic about the innovation and value creation I see in front of us. The number of startups being created has increased by an order of magnitude. Thank you, Aaron Sorkin! Today’s Normalization.

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venture capital capital ventures VC 347

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 11, 2014

The father of “Growth Hacking” appears to be Sean Ellis who wrote this widely read post, “ Find a Growth Hacker for your Startup. For starters it brings a mindset to startups that not all of them have innately. If your startup isn’t committed to growth hacking you’ll never find extra-ordinary growth.

peer-to-peer 384

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

There were many moments in each space when pioneers were funding startups and the press hadn’t written much about them and if you were a typical investor you were still funding the last trend while some VCs were trailblazing into new categories. Startup Lessons' Almost nobody believed and now look at it. Online education.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 26, 2019

Ynon had been the CEO of Maker Studios and I trust his opinion a great deal so of course I took the meeting. Petri built the studio and they developed the majority of game play in Finland, where there are a deep pool of talented video games professionals. Ok, I did occasionally pepper him with questions about Seriously.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 28, 2013

I’m thankful to all of the time away from family that Courtney Holt has put in at Maker Studios. I personally know how stressful it can be at a startup and especially so when you face business challenges as most of us do. Startup Advice' He joined when we were a small team with no revenue and shitty offices. Best, Mark.

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AsiaTechDaily

JULY 21, 2023

Register Singapore-based global design studio XM HoldCo Pte Ltd and its subsidiaries, collectively known as the XM Group, have successfully concluded their latest fundraising round. The post Singapore’s XM Group Secures AIOX-led Funding for Global Expansion first appeared on AsiaTechDaily - Asia's Leading Tech and Startup Media Platform.

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AsiaTechDaily

APRIL 10, 2024

Rio Tinto, a prominent Australian mining company, has partnered strategically with Founders Factory, a renowned global venture studio and startup investor.

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TechCrunch

OCTOBER 11, 2022

French startup Homa has raised a $100 million Series B funding round. Homa partners with indie mobile game studios so that their games are perfectly optimized to become a hit game on the App Store and Google Play. Quadrille Capital and Headline are leading the round. Up next, Homa wants to explore web3 and the world of NFTs.

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AsiaTechDaily

OCTOBER 26, 2023

The new initiative includes a strategic partnership with the highly anticipated X-PITCH 2023, a global deeptech startup competition aimed at catalyzing the widespread adoption of cutting-edge technology across diverse industries. “We see immense potential in partnering with X-PITCH.

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